- Over the past few years,
I've used a number
of different identity monitoring services.
Now it's taken me a while,
but I've settled on Identity Guard as the one
that at least for now is what I use and recommend.
This is not a sponsored video.
Okay.
I'm gonna pause here
for just a moment as I'm editing this video,
there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes
that you don't know about for me as a YouTube creator.
And in this case, not only was this video not sponsored,
but Identity Guards, parent company,
Aura has now cut all ties with me because of this video.
However, I'm gonna leave this review as is,
and if you're interested, I'll explain at the end,
the full story of why I stand by my review,
but will not be promoting Identity Guard moving forward.
Cool?
Alright, let's get back into it.
These are my honest opinions about what I like
and what I don't like as well
as a peek inside my dashboard to see how it works.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to All Things Secured.
My name's Josh.
And if you take nothing else away from watching this video,
I hope you'll hear me on this one thing.
It's worth your time
to be proactive about your identity monitoring
instead of reactive.
I mean, it's pretty standard
for all identity monitoring services nowadays
to offer $1,000,000 in ID theft insurance.
But if you get to the point
that you're trying to make use of that insurance policy,
you've already lost the game.
For this reason.
My priority in this review
is looking at the monitoring features
more than the theft recovery features.
For one thing,
I thankfully haven't had
to use their recovery services and insurance,
but also we have more control over the prevention
of identity theft than we do the actual theft recovery.
So what does a service like Identity Guard even do?
Well, the best way to answer that is
to just let you see my dashboard.
Right off the bat,
you see that I have eight alerts,
which I'll explain in a moment
along with my credit score and my credit report.
I've also installed their little browser extension
that blocks fishing sites insecure sites and ads.
I can also have them review my social media privacy settings
to let me know where there might be cause for concern.
Again, I'll show you what they've found in just a moment.
And finally,
they provide a place to find how to create credit freezes,
and then store any freeze pins that I'm given.
And if you saw my video last month,
you know that I highly recommend doing a credit freeze,
not just on your account,
but also for your spouse and your kids.
And speaking of my wife and kids,
you'll see that I'm also monitoring the data
for all three of them.
Identity Guard allows you
to add every adult who resides at your home address
and as many kids for whom you are a parent or guardian.
Now that's the dashboard.
But what you didn't see was all the information I entrusted
to Identity Guards that they can alert me
if they find it anywhere.
That includes very personal things
like my social security number, my date of birth address,
credit card number, driver's license number,
even my passport number.
This kind of trust is required
for any identity monitoring service you use.
And that's why it's super important
that you choose a company that you feel comfortable with.
And I'll give you a little more background info
on Identity Guard
and the parent company Aura in just a moment.
But once they have this info,
they monitor for any kind
of fraudulent usage and alert you to what they find.
So let's take a look at the alerts I've received so far.
The high risk alerts you see here
happened when I was working with my bank,
which is Chase to fix something on my account.
I had called them up.
And since I'm overseas,
I had to go through a number
of different verification processes.
This unbeknownst to me at the time triggered some sort
of ID verification transaction.
And this came up as an alert after I hung up the phone.
Now it's important to stop
and note that for the sake of this YouTube channel,
I've actually signed up for a couple
of different identity monitoring services,
many which are brand names
that you've probably heard of before.
But when Chase did an ID check on me,
the only monitoring service
that alerted me was Identity Guard.
Now this among other things is one
of the reasons why they become my go-to recommendation
for identity and credit monitoring services.
Now, if I scroll down here, you'll see
that they also went through all my social media posts
and alerted me to anything that might be inappropriate
or might reflect poorly on me.
Honestly, all of these were pretty humorous
to me and nothing I ended up changing,
but I can see where this might bring up
something you forgot you posted 10 years ago,
that you should probably take down now
for the sake of future employment or something like that.
I should mention that I also get these alerts on my phone.
Since I downloaded the Identity Guard app,
the app does pretty much everything
that you saw on my desktop dashboard,
including tracking my vantage score credit score,
notifying me of new alerts and allowing me
to add new pieces of information on my watch list.
But again, we're going back to this issue of trust.
I'm trusting this one company with a lot of data.
So it's important for me to know who they are.
So let's dive into that for a moment.
First things, first Identity Guard is a product
of a company called Aura,
which was officially formed in 2019 by the combination
of an antivirus brand called Intrusta
and this identity monitoring brand Identity Guard.
Now this ID monitoring service has been around
for more than 20 years, at least according to their website.
And they're very transparent about their leadership
and company structure.
I personally feel pretty confident using their service
because I'm not aware of any data breach
that has happened in the past
and they're consistently recognized
for their best practices and data security and privacy.
That being said, my one hesitation with Aura has
to do with their suite of products.
I remember when LifeLock was acquired by Norton
and all of a sudden I was being upsold
on every Norton product that they had.
I was no longer a LifeLock member.
I was a NortonLifeLock member and they wanted me
to buy their antivirus software, their VPN software,
and anything else they could think up.
It was quite annoying, frankly.
And it was the primary reason that I left LifeLock.
Now, Aura hasn't done this yet,
but they're positioning themselves
to do exactly the same thing.
So this is my message to Aura
if you're watching this right now.
I like your identity monitoring product, I really do.
But if you go down the same path as LifeLock
and use my subscription with Identity Guard,
to market all your antivirus, all your VPNs
and who knows what other products you have,
I'm not gonna be happy.
I purchased Identity Guard
because I needed an identity monitoring service, that's all.
Okay.
Rant over.
As I close up this review, let me be clear about two things.
First,
there's not much being offered with Identity Guard
or with any identity monitoring service
for that matter that you can't do yourself.
You can set your own credit freezes,
check your own credit score,
credit report for free.
And many banks now even offer identity monitoring
although it's usually only with one credit bureau
and not all three.
Second, you need
to understand what a service like Identity Guard can't do.
They can't prevent identity or credit fraud.
They simply provide timely alerts
that you can fix it as fast as possible.
And that kind of speed is key
to recovering from identity theft.
Also, they don't correct errors on your credit report.
They just show it to you.
In the end though, my recommendation is this.
If you know yourself well enough
to know that you won't take the time
to check your credit report
and you won't go through the trouble
of setting up your credit freezes,
then paying $100 a year to monitor you
and your family is a no brainer.
Alright, pausing one last time
to explain why I'm no longer working with Identity Guard,
despite this obviously positive review.
I'm gonna be really transparent with you here
because the more that this YouTube channel grows,
the more important it is
that I maintain my credibility with you my audience.
I don't hide the fact
that I have an affiliate relationship with many
of the companies that I promote.
What this means is
that whenever you purchase a product through my link,
I'm sometimes compensated by that company.
I'm required by the FTC,
the Federal Trade Commission to disclose that relationship,
at least in the U.S. and I do.
Now, obviously this can be misused, no abused.
This type of affiliate marketing can be abused.
And the only way to make it work
is if I the creator can build enough trust with you
so that you know that I'm only promoting the things
that I actually use
and companies that I believe in.
Otherwise, I'm just shilling whoever pays me the most money
and unfortunately that does happen with some channels.
Now, one potential problem is that some companies think
that because they're paying me,
they have control over the content I create.
And that's what's happened here.
Identity Guard mandated that they be allowed
to edit and review my review
and anything else I write about them
or else they wouldn't pay me for any customers that I refer.
They incorrectly assumed that money
is what mattered most to me.
And in the process,
they showed me their true colors as a company.
They were blurring the lines
between an independent affiliate
and a contracted marketing position.
And I'm not comfortable with that.
Based on email correspondence with them,
their view is that they're concerned
about FTC compliance and making sure
that what I say about their product is accurate.
And I get that, but this is a review.
I mean, I can't do my job building trust with you
if they can't trust me.
Does that make sense?
And understand that FTC compliance
and product accuracy is my responsibility not theirs.
My credibility is damaged
if I don't disclose my affiliate relationship
and if my review is full of errors,
it's on me not them.
I've worked with over 50 different companies
as an affiliate over the years,
including other identity monitoring services.
And do you know how many
of them them have required a legal review process?
Just one.
And that's Identity Guard.
Honestly, it makes sense a little bit mad,
but I'm not going to go back
and change this review to be a negative one,
because that too would be some sort of affiliate bias
if I'm putting a negative review
because you're not paying me.
So instead I've left it here with an (indistinct)
to explain why I won't continue
to promote a service that I genuinely enjoy using
from a company that I genuinely don't respect.
If you have any questions or comments
about what I'm saying here,
then leave them in the comments below
and let's have a discussion about it.
And since there is no affiliate link in this video,
the best way that you can support what I'm doing here is by
liking the video and subscribing,
it really means a lot to me.